7 ms·
There was a pretty good HN comment thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099 From the linked
by coke12 7y ago
There was a pretty good HN comment thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16723099
From the linked thread:
"""
5. The stupid toilet bowl lid only fell about 8 inches. How could it damage my hearing so badly? I looked up the speed of sound in ceramic, divided by the length of the toilet bowl lid (and divided by 2 since the fundamental vibration is a half wavelength). This predicts 3.5 kHz.
6. This frequency is in the audible range. Using the short dimension of the toilet bowl predicts another (higher) frequency. The toilet bowl lid probably resonated at both those frequencies and their harmonics, putting all the energy into just those specific wavelengths.
7. The toilet bowl lid was not chipped or damaged, so the impact energy went mainly into sound (& internal heat) Maybe like half the impact energy went into sound energy. This lid was concave up like an antenna, near my face when it hit, focusing the energy into my face.
8. The energy travels into your inner ear and the cochlea. The pressure wave is strongest at some distance down the cochlea depending on frequency. Since the toilet bowl lid put all the energy into SPECIFIC FREQUENCIES, it was concentrated onto specific spots in the cochlea.
9. Apparently, this concentration of energy was enough to damage the hairs -- to bend them over like trampled grass -- and I was concerned it could be permanent. My hearing was only slightly better the next morning. It was like everybody was still talking at me through kazoos.
"""
Fascinating. Be careful around dropping shatter-proof ceramics, I suppose!
- Cerium 7y agoBe careful dropping glass bottles into recycling bins too; they pose nearly the same problem - they don't usually shatter and the sound escapes the bin upwards towards you.
- skeletonjelly 7y agoWish I knew this back when I worked in bars, emptying big bins of glass into the outdoor bins. Learnt quickly to look up when I did it.
- QuixoticQuibit 7y agoHow would looking up help, though? Unless I’m misunderstanding, the sound would still be coming up straight towards your face/ears.
- skrebbel 7y agoYou look up by bending your neck and your upper back, so when your body is bent forward, looking up will actually move your head (incl your ears) further away from the glass bin.
- cat199 7y agorather than your ears concentrating/funneling the sound into your ear canal, they would be muffling it since the direct sound wave direction would basically now point into your earlobe
- skeletonjelly 7y agoWhat the other kind commenters said. I just found it worked. I like the analogy of the funnel, pointing it 90 degrees from where it usually is. OH&S wasn't such a thing back in my day (and I'm not even that old), smoking inside was still a thing (banned in that Australian state I was in a long time ago now). I'd use the air conditioners as a break to get some fresh air. But anyway, a big bin full of glass being emptied was damn loud, but all the concerts I went to wouldn't have helped.
- mehrdadn 7y agoWhy isn't this taught to everyone at a young age? I had no idea this could happen and it kind of terrifies me that I can lose my hearing so easily like this without having any clue.
- mikestew 7y agoThen go buy the toilet lids that don’t drop with the acceleration of gravity, i. e., “soft close”. Hearing loss or not, I don’t want to hear anyone dropping the toilet lid in the middle of the night.
- dijit 7y agoI don't believe we're talking about the same thing. The ceramic lid usually goes over the water tank. (also, you can't control all the toilets in the world)
- dllthomas 7y ago> (also, you can't control all the toilets in the world) But imagine if you could!
- morsch 7y agoThe culprit was actually a lid on the tank. I've never seen a toilet lid, soft close or not, that doesn't have plastic pieces that prevent full direct contact between the lid and the part below it. They'll deform under pressure, taking the noise level down from unbearable to just loud.
- mikestew 7y agoYeah, I saw that it was the lid after I posted. In fact, I even remember the original post, and at the time thought, "huh, never even thought of that". Welcome to middle age, where a lot of stuff starts to occur to you after the fact. :-|
- obituary_latte 7y ago
- dogsgobork 7y agoI've been surprised at how loud emptying a bucket of aluminum cans into an empty bin can be, the half open lid also reflects the sound back toward you.
- Tempest1981 7y agoI've started tilting the bin at a 45 degree angle, and sliding the bottles in. Seems to help somewhat.
- Sharlin 7y agoYeah, and it’s even worse if the bin happens to be in an enclosed space!
- pmontra 7y agoYes, that's the recurrent loudest noise I experience in my life. Not so many times per year obviously, but more than concerts or disco. I should try bending knees to put my ears below the top of the bin.
- GeorgeWBasic 7y agoI recall reading that discussion when it was first posted. There was something I didn't understand at the time, and now that it's brought up again, I want to ask: He mentions there being a fairly short window in which an ENT physician can try to treat the damage, after which no treatments will be possible. I thought all hearing damage was permanent, always, notwithstanding the potential new advances in growing the hairs back. So what exactly could they try, and what difference does time make?
- nabla9 7y agoThey prescribe systemic steroids. Steroids reduce inflammation and might help recovery a little.
- 0xfaded 7y agoThis comes up fairly often on tinnitus fora. Basically there is some "consensus" that a shot of steroids within a very short window, ideally less than 24 hours, can help. Unfortunately, the most common response to damaging one's hearing seems to be to sleep it off for a week and hope it gets better, making it difficult to conduct a study on early responses. There are studies though, and my conclusion is that it's still mostly inconclusive. Still, if my tinnitus suddenly worsened id be down at the doctor's begging for the steroids.
- eitland 7y agoIf I understand correctly some of the most common painkillers are steroids. I might have seen Ibuprofen mentioned explicitly in relation with hearing loss. Can anyone confirm or deny if taking Ibuprofen could help if one is stuck without a doctor?
- incidentnormal 7y agoWell, ibuprofen is certainly not a steroid - it is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti inflammatory drug)
- 7y ago
- benj111 7y agoTo avoid confusion here, I think we are talking about ceramic cistern lids and not toilet bowl lids as the parent quote actually mentions. The post starts off mentioning cistern lids, and the title mentions cistern lids, but lapses into toilet bowl lid about the time the parent starts quoting. "2 I was fixing the mechanism inside the tank of the toilet. The only thing left to do was to put the ceramic lid back on the tank" So guys, still no excuse for not putting the lid back down when you've finished ;)
- reitzensteinm 7y agoI wonder if screaming when you realize you're dropping it would provide some protection.
- mnw21cam 7y agoIf your reflexes are that good, sure.